Hope this finds everyone well. My name is Chris Piontek and I recently competed in my first ever Men's Physique competition this past weekend. Although I didn't place, I was very pleased with my physique and truly enjoyed all the preparation and the lifestyle change that I underwent and it was a great experience. I was Vegan for about 3 years prior to the competition, sadly I chose to explore a traditional bodybuilder diet for the contest even though it was really unsettling for me psychologically. I am so thankful for finding this community and have been actively following Vegan athletes on social networks such as Facebook and Instagram as a source of inspiration and motivation. Today, I am recommitting myself to the Vegan lifestyle because it is truly where my heart is at and I have been studying my butt off in regards to sports nutrition and have my eyes set on competing as a Vegan athlete for years to come. Hope everyone has a blessed week!

Hey Chris! Welcome to the forum, sounds like we are lucky to have someone like you here.

I for one am looking forward to seeing you around and posting more ~ please consider starting up a training journal as it sounds like a lot of people could benefit from reading about how you train, diet etc etc. Do you have any photos from your show? I bet that was an amazing experience, it wasn't at the Jay Cutler Classic was it? I had a friend that was competing in the Physique category there.

Mini Forklift Ⓥ wrote:Hey Chris! Welcome to the forum, sounds like we are lucky to have someone like you here.

I for one am looking forward to seeing you around and posting more ~ please consider starting up a training journal as it sounds like a lot of people could benefit from reading about how you train, diet etc etc. Do you have any photos from your show? I bet that was an amazing experience, it wasn't at the Jay Cutler Classic was it? I had a friend that was competing in the Physique category there.

Welcome MF.

The show that I did was the BSN Emerald Cup, which is generally considered the most popular/well-known competition in the state of WA. I guess it is just my personality, but, I like taking on the toughest challenges on my first try. I am really considering competing in another show about 17 weeks from now so if I decide to follow through with that I will most certainly post training/nutrition log. The pictures from the show weren't all that incredible -- it seems the lighting drowned out some of my definition, but I will attach some photos regardless -- Two of the photos are from the show -- 1 stage, 1 non-stage -- and the other is from just under a week before the show.